Dr. Allan Lichtman, a historian with a stellar track record of correctly predicting nine of the ten last general election outcomes, has weighed in on the Donald Trump vs. Joe Biden debate.
The American University professor warned that while it might be too early to tell if a guilty verdict will spell disaster for Trump, the Democrats are likely not in a position to rest easy either, Knewz.com has learned.
Dr. Lichtman bases his predictions on a formula he calls "Keys to the White House," which he developed with mathematician Vladimir Keilis-Borok in 1981 and is based on their analysis of presidential elections dating back to 1860.
According to the election oracle, the secret to the success of his predictions is leaving his own preferences out of the equation.
The "Keys," a collection of 13 true or false questions, helped Dr. Lichtman correctly predict the re-election of President Barack Obama in 2012, a time when GOP candidate Mitt Romney was being favored nationwide.
He also correctly predicted Trump's win in the 2016 Presidential elections despite polls, debate performances, and political commentators all favoring Democrat Hillary Clinton. He called the 2020 election for Biden as well.
"The keys are an alternative to the polls, which are not predictors. They're snapshots, they're abused, not used as predictors. And the pundits, you know, who are a lot of fun, but they're sports talk radio. They have no scientific basis for any of their predictions," Dr. Lichtman told Fox News.
"We reconceptualize presidential elections not as Carter versus Reagan, Republican versus Democrat, liberal versus conservative, but in geophysical terms."
He also explained his process further, saying that if an answer to the True-False questionnaire in the "Key" is "true," it shows that the party in the White House keeps its power. If the answer is "false," it indicates an "Earthquake: The White House party is turned out."
The 13 "Keys" in Dr. Lichtman'ss formula are party mandate, contest, incumbency, third party, short-term economy, long-term economy, policy change, social unrest, scandal, foreign/military failure, foreign/military success, incumbent charisma, and challenger charisma.
Although he has not yet made a final projection, he believes that "a lot would have to go wrong for Biden to lose to Trump," per Fox News. However, the incumbent President has already lost two of his "Keys."
"He's lost what I call the mandate key based on midterm elections because the Democrats lost seats in 2022, they needed to win seats to win that key. And he loses the charisma key because he's no Franklin Roosevelt or John F. Kennedy," said Dr. Lichtman.
Per his predictions, if he loses over six Keys, he is likely to be voted out of Office. However, he also claimed that replacing the incumbent President with another Democrat candidate would cost the party two more Keys.
"With Biden running, he wins my incumbency key: sitting president. He wins the party contest: uncontested. Essentially, that means he wins two keys off the top... This nonsense about Biden stepping down points to the dangers of off-the-top-of-the-head punditry and commentary that is not based on any scientific understanding of how elections work."
The four Keys to watch for Biden, according to Dr. Lichtman, are whether a third-party candidate (like Robert F. Kennedy Jr.) wins at least 10% support in national polls, the social unrest related to Pro-Palestine college protests, and the success or failure of Biden' foreign policy amidst the Ukraine war and the Gaza conflict.
On the other hand, he claimed that Trump's conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records does not seem to have "cracked his base" of supporting voters, although it remains to be seen how voters outside of the base would react to "a convicted criminal on the presidential ballot."
"We're not going to know much until the sentencing hearing on July 11, right before the Republican convention... We don't know how this might affect moderate and swing independent voters. So really, we have got to look over time and not rely on instant, unreliable punditry," the historian stated.